The Department of Statistics at UBC is pleased to announce that Margarita Kapustina has been selected as the recipient of the 2025–2026 Department of Statistics Award in Data Science.
Kapustina is a PhD candidate in Neuroscience in the Cembrowski Lab at UBC, where her work sits at the intersection of neuroscience and data science. Her research focuses on developing open‑source analytical tools that enable scientists to extract meaningful insights from large‑scale biological datasets.
“This award highlights how developing open‑source analytical tools can transform large-scale biological datasets into meaningful discoveries about the brain's cellular organization and function,” Kapustina said. “These discoveries provide the framework to advance our understanding of neurological diseases and identify novel therapeutic targets.”
Her supervisor, Dr. Mark Cembrowski, praised her contributions and impact: “Margo is a rising star in both data science and computational neuroscience. In just a few years as a graduate student, she has developed a variety of open-source tools enabling analysis of complex transcriptional datasets, which have had broad uptake in the scientific community. She has also applied these tools in a variety of settings to reveal new—and previously unforeseen—rules of how the brain is organized into cell types.”
The Department of Statistics Award in Data Science recognizes students who demonstrate initiative, creativity, and excellence in applying data-driven methods to meaningful questions. The annual $1,000 award is open to undergraduate and graduate students from any program at UBC Vancouver who have made outstanding contributions to the field of data science.
The Department extends its warmest congratulations to Margarita Kapustina on this well‑deserved achievement.